The protection of liberty is too important to be left to partisan hacks

By
Jack Kelly

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
President George W. Bush set off a political firestorm when he ordered three senior al Qaida leaders to be waterboarded to get them to disclose details of terror plots. The controversy raged for years, consuming hours of air time and acres of newsprint.

Waterboarding (an enhanced interrogation technique which simulates drowning) is "torture," charged opponents. Waterboarding violates international law, and is a threat to our liberties, they said.

Can you imagine how much more of a fuss there would have been if Mr. Bush had ordered the assassination of an American citizen?

When Mr. Bush established a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for captured terrorists, another maelstrom of criticism descended upon him.

When President Bush announced plans to try some terrorists by military commission, his critics grew angrier. That would be "a civil liberties calamity in this country," charged an indignant Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Military commissions are "the spearhead of a long-term incursion on all our civil liberties," said the Nation magazine.

Captured terrorists should be tried in our courts, said Sen. Barack Obama.

If there was so much fury at Mr. Bush for not according foreign terrorists the same legal rights as Americans, how much more outrage would there have been if he had announced plans to hold American citizens indefinitely without trial?

In September, the president ordered the assassination of an American citizen living abroad. The Senate passed earlier this month a bill that would permit the president to arrest and to hold indefinitely without trial American citizens who are suspected of terrorism.

You may not be aware of this, because we've heard little about it from most of those who raged about President Bush's alleged offenses against civil liberties.

The lesser point is that many self-styled "civil libertarians" are partisan hacks who ignore or defend during a Democratic administration policies they railed against when a Republican was president.

This point is nicely illustrated by the history of the Patriot Act, which permits the FBI to search the telephone, email and financial records of terror suspects without a court order, and permits the attorney general to detain indefinitely non-citizens who are suspected of terror.

Most Democrats voted for the Patriot Act when it was proposed shortly after 9/11. (It passed the House 357 to 66; the Senate 98-1.) But most Democrats voted against reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006, charging noisily it posed an unjustified threat to civil liberties. Then in May, many of the Democrats who voted against reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 quietly supported its extension.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay is still open, despite Mr. Obama's campaign pledge to close it. Their silence suggests that many who regarded it as an affront to civil liberties when Mr. Bush was president no longer do.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior al Qaida leader who happened to be born in New Mexico, was killed in Yemen by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. I support President Obama's decision to take him out. But I'm nervous about it.

I'm more nervous about the provision in the defense bill the Senate passed Dec. 6 to arrest within the United States and to hold without trial American citizens suspected of terrorism.

U.S. citizens have constitutional rights. Noncitizens are entitled to only such "rights" as we grant them.

This is a distinction liberals seem unable to make. They would extend constitutional protections even to foreign terrorists, no matter the danger that poses, yet stand quietly by while the rights of citizens are circumscribed -- if the restrictions are proposed by a Democrat.

The case of Mr. Awlaki indicates we should be more careful to whom we grant citizenship, and we should have procedures to strip it promptly from those who ally with the enemy.

Prudence requires the authorities be given some latitude during wartime. But I don't see how the arrest in this country of an American citizen, and his or her indefinite detention without trial can be squared with the Bill of Rights.

There is inevitable tension between liberty and security. Liberties are lost -- or stolen -- most often during emergencies, real and imagined. The protection of liberty is too important to be left to partisan hacks.

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